


A Study in Actuality

by sunandrainfic



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Cloud Strife Has Mental Health Issues, Cloud Strife Needs a Hug, Hallucinations, Hope you enjoy, Manipulation, Typical Sephiroth Mindfuckery, and also therapy, and i'm kind of all the way here for it, i don't know this just came out of me, sorry in advance, they went all out on Sephiroth being a horror-film phantom in this game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24112900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunandrainfic/pseuds/sunandrainfic
Summary: The first time it happens, it’s easy to brush it off. His head is killing him. The reactor has just exploded. Mako fumes are everywhere. It's not a stretch the think he’s inhaled too much of it and begun hallucinating.The third time it happens, Tifa stops him before he can murder their neighbor.Cloud knows what's real. Until he doesn't.
Relationships: Sephiroth & Cloud Strife
Comments: 12
Kudos: 128





	A Study in Actuality

**Author's Note:**

> Just a drabble taking place throughout Remake's plot. I kind of feel weird posting fic, because I haven’t written in years, and never for FF7. But Remake got me hook, line, and sinker, and this was niggling in my head until I wrote it down, so... I guess I’ll just leave it here. And then go hide in a corner. And hope if anyone reads it, they enjoy?

The first time it happens, it’s easy to brush it off. His head is killing him. The reactor has just exploded. Mako fumes are everywhere. It's not a stretch the think he’s inhaled too much of it and begun hallucinating. 

"You're not real." He says out loud. He killed the bastard. He knows what's real. _(He stomps down on the seed of doubt sprouting at the back of his mind.)_

But that voice is a tightening coil around his skull, a hypnotic throb of pain that fogs his thoughts the longer the bastard speaks, and for a moment he--isn’t even there. He’s back in Nibelheim, fire so blistering he can barely see, barely breathe, barely think past that voice, those words, echoing inside his head like the bastard's crawled inside his skin to try it on for size--knotting him up into a mess of rage and aggression and _fight_ that has him propelling down the alley, leaping into the air, and slicing down onto--

Nothing. All that rage, that aggression, nowhere to go but burn up his veins because the bastard's not there. He’s not real. Cloud's seeing things.

The second time it happens, the pain drowns the fear and fight reflex almost before it can rise up within him, and he starts to wonder if maybe the force of the blast rattled his brain or something. Maybe this is a side effect of a minor concussion. But that girl with the flowers is acting kind of weird, too, so fuck it, maybe they’re _all_ just flying high on mako tonight.

The third time it happens, Tifa stops him before he can murder their neighbor.

That’s when an ember of panic sparks. 

Because this one didn’t come with a headache, and the mako should be out of his system by now. And he--it had felt _so real_. But looking at the pale, sick man huddling under Tifa’s arms, that also feels real. As real as that bastard’s smug smile, as real as that terrifying strength pinning him to the floor. 

_(And he'd gone somewhere else again, somewhere he didn't remember ever being this time. Again, in a blink, pulled out, not there.)_

His heart thuds hard against his ribs. He shivers. Almost drops the Buster. Tifa can only see the sick man, so that means the sick man is the real one, and the bastard was just made up in his head. But try as he might, Cloud can’t look back and tell the difference between the two. There _is_ no difference between the two. 

_(Shit, he almost killed that man.)_

A part of him thinks: you're fine, dumbass. Don't be so dramatic. You inhaled a lot of mako, and you're flush full of the stuff already. Maybe SOLDIERs cling to it longer than civilians.

That part of him shuts up real quick when it happens again. And again. And again. Like nails trapping him in a coffin he doesn't remember agreeing to lay down in. A full-on panic attack creeps up and over him every time the bastard shows up, towering over him like a mako-mad monster, terror freezing him cold. He runs through rationalizations: maybe he was a mako junkie before, and that’s why everything’s full of holes, and he’s going through withdrawal now. _(But he was SOLDIER, SOLDIERs aren't mako junkies.)_ Maybe Sephiroth’s haunting him from beyond the grave, a ghost enacting vengeance. _(But then why does Cloud feel his breath when he speaks in his ear, why does he look so alive?)_ Until the inevitable reason sits cramped and spiked in his gut: there’s something wrong with him.

With _him_ , specifically. Because it turns out the flower girl _wasn’t_ sharing a joint hallucination with him ( _and a pang of loneliness comes with that realization):_ everyone else in Avalanche can see those black wraiths, too. They're real, they have effect on people other than Cloud. But _no one_ , still, can see Sephiroth. 

And Cloud sees him everywhere. Cloud _hears_ him everywhere, and he’s not dead, he can’t be dead if he can talk to Cloud like this, if he can grip his hand, his shoulder with weight and heat that feels so _real_ like this, but no one else sees him, so maybe he is? Maybe he is, and it’s just that Cloud’s fucked up. It’s just that Cloud's brain isn’t working right. Which explains a lot, honestly.

_(And that feels true as soon as he thinks it, truer than almost any other thought he's had over the past few days, but he can’t figure out why. He’s missing something. He goes searching for it but comes back with empty hands and aching temples.)_

By the time they're inside Shinra, inside Hojo's lab _(and he hates that son-of-a-bitch nearly as much as he hates Sephiroth, with an instinctive rage he doesn't remember the source of)_ \-- nothing is making sense. He saw Tifa and Barret die, but Tifa and Barret are still alive. He felt himself floating in a tank of suffocating mako, but he’s breathing air and tasting metal. He’s starting to wonder if _he’s_ the one that isn’t real. 

When the bastard shows up, he almost expects it. The headache comes, so familiar these past few days he's gotten used to gritting his teeth through it, and reality flickers around him.

Except this time something hooks into him, and _tugs,_ like a beckoning. It slices through him, fogging the world around in static. Tifa backs away, staring at a figure no one else should be able to see, and he shouldn't ask -- he shouldn't be asking out loud in general but he definitely shouldn't be asking _him_ of all people in specific -- not in front of Barret, or Aerith, not in front of _Tifa_ \-- but...

"Tell me." He doesn't beg. _(He doesn't know why he's stepping closer. He doesn't know why he's asking_ ** _him._** _)_ “Are you real?” ... _Or am I?_

His head bursts and the world flips upside-down. He clings as he teeters at the edge of a precipice, of _there_ and _not there_ , fighting against a hypnotic throb of pain like fire in his veins, fire so blistering he can barely see, barely breathe, barely think past that voice, those words, spouting bullshit in his ears, knotting him up into a mess of rage and aggression and _fight_ that has him propelling down the catwalk, leaping into the air, and slicing his sword down onto--

Solid steel. 

He's there. He's real.

_This is real!_

Even as he's tossed away (swatted aside like a fly), he feels a shift. The knowledge sinks deep in his bones. Grounds him with a certainty that sharpens the world back to focus. There's nothing wrong with him. The others can see the bastard too, the others talk about him like he's real, and the relief and validation bolster him, firm his resolve. The others are his touchstone. The rocks of his foundation. So when they step into the portal the bastard somehow ripped into the sky and _fly_ over Midgar, Cloud has no doubt it's real. When they see visions of the future as they fight a giant, he has no doubt it's real. When his sword clangs against Masamune, and he finds himself, suddenly, _not there_ \-- finds himself instead in a place full of stars he's told is "the edge of creation" (whatever the fuck that means, why does this man always have to speak in riddles) -- he has no doubt it's real.

Until...

_"Seven seconds ‘til the end,"_ the bastard says in his ear. And it feels so much like _you can't save anyone --_ like _the reunion is nothing to fear --_ like _isn't that what you want --_ that a sudden, terrifying doubt freezes him in place, swallowing him whole.

_He's not there_ , his brain whispers. 

All his certainty and strength and fury slip out from under his feet in a tug of familiar panic. Cloud _turns--_

And he's not. He's _not_ there. The bastard's disappeared. 

Flew away, maybe.

Or maybe he was never there in the first place.

His heart thuds hard against his ribs. The stars above him wink like they're in on the joke. He remembers Tifa and Barret, dying in the Shinra building. He remembers being trapped in a mako tank. He finds himself back beside his friends, standing on a paved road, Aerith's fingers wrapped around his wrist as shockingly gentle as Sephiroth's were mere minutes ago.

He can’t tell the difference between them. There _is_ no difference between them.

He's not sure which is real.


End file.
